Located on Edisto Island, South Carolina – Botany Bay Plantation offers access to a portion of the beach that was once a forest of large trees. The trees are dead, but the many remains litter the beach. This is one of the most photographed trees on the beach.

This is a long exposure, captured shortly after sunrise with a neutral density filter. I will have more photos of some of the other trees soon!

I have dreamed of this photo for months and months, finally I was able to make it happen! I first discovered Laurel Mill using Google Maps last summer. I made one trip out to attempt to photograph it and was disheartened to find “No Trespassing” signs all over. As I’ve stated before, as a professional photographer I believe it is important to respect other peoples property, so I decided not to shoot it that night. After some research, I was able to find the address of the owner and wrote him a letter. To my surprise, he actually called me back and gave me permission to shoot there anytime. Now I just had to wait for the right night – clear skies. I finally got the opportunity last Friday night…

The sky is a blend of around 225 exposures, each at 30 seconds long. The foreground (water and mill) is a single exposure that is 2 minutes long. There was no moon and the road was too far away for car lights to light the mill. I had to do the 2 minute exposure to get a foreground with enough detail and light. I was beginning to get worried that the mist rising from the water due to the exceptionally cool evening would fog the lens or ruin the scene. Instead, I think it adds a nice softness to that area of the image. Exposure details are below.

Sky
Blend of 225 exposures.
f2.8
30 seconds
ISO 1600

Foreground
f2.8
122 seconds
ISO 3200

The foreground was photographed first, followed immediately by the 200+ sky exposures.

This is the barn at the Fearington Village, near Chapel Hill, NC. I believe the inside is actually a restaurant/event space. I’ve made a couple recent visits to Fearington, and I believe this is my favorite image from there so far.

Got up reeeeaaaaallllllyyyy early one morning and headed to the beach. Made it in time for sunrise
The main image is my favorite from the morning. I found this location just by looking around on google maps. I knew I would have to wait for low tide to be at the lowest around sunrise. I also needed decent weather/no rain. I finally got that combination yesterday, so I was up at 4am and headed to North Topsail Beach. I would have liked to have been there a little earlier, but I arrived just before the sun was coming up over the horizon.

Same morning, other versions:

This one was photographed a little later than the others. The sun was much higher in the sky, which is why the colors are so different. I used a 10 stop filter to get the motion in the water.

I found another great looking old house last night. This one near Coats, NC.

This photo consists of 169 30-second exposures. Facing east, the stars are rising from behind the house. The house and land is lit with a combination of moonlight and headlights from passing cars over the 1.5 hour time.

1600 ISO, f4.0, 16mm, 30 seconds x169

I will not give out the exact location of this one as I was approached by the owner while shooting here last night. After briefly explaining what I was doing, he was nice enough to allow me to continue. There are a lot of photographers that wouldn’t hesitate at trespassing to get a photo, but I will just not do that. I was shooting from the road, and was respectful of their property. There was a “No Trespassing” sign up and I don’t want to be responsible for other photographers showing up.

You may remember this house from my last post where the weather wouldn’t cooperate. Well, Saturday night may have only been 22 degrees, but there wasn’t a cloud in site so I rode back out to this abandoned house I found on Google maps to shoot some startrails.

This is a combination of 240 exposures. Each exposure was 30 seconds long. The exposures were then stacked together to show the movement of the stars in a two hour time period. The camera settings for the exposures were: f2.8, ISO 1000, white balance set to “tungsten” to help combat the light pollution from nearby towns.

The house is located near Pinetops, NC. It looks as though it was once a large, beautiful old farm house. It’s amazing to me that a house like this is just left to rot away.